The Product of a Broken Heart

by Crystal Ismael

  A young lady who was recently married told me she was having a hard time with her marriage and questioned if she should stay in it. I told her to think about what is going well and what she thought was wrong. After a week or two, she called and gave me her response. After listening to her ramble on about how he doesn’t cook and he not as fun as he was before. I asked, “Are you willing to fight for what you wanted in the beginning? Those are things you can work on if you both are willing, I said to her. What changed your mind about the man you were so in love with and had googly eyes over I asked. What happened to the ‘Oh, I just love him’ and the ‘Oh, God, I promise to do right by him’?

  Before she could finish the list of the things he didn’t do, I stopped her and asked her the question again. “Are you willing to fight for what you wanted in the beginning?” The distractions of hard times began to cloud her vision. She forgot all about what and who she vowed to. Her bad times outweighed her promise to God. The “he doesn’t cook,” and “he doesn’t help clean” complaints began to fog her vision. As soon as you get ready to engage in something tremendous, all kinds of distractions and heartaches come seemingly one after another. One important lesson I learned is that I cannot lose my sight; I must learn to fight through what comes my way, standing firm in God’s will.

  I laughed and told the woman, “Welcome to the club. Now go fight for your marriage,” and left it at that. So many times, we make what is small into big problems and what is big we tend to condense. One thing for sure, I learned to notice what is a battle and when it is time to prepare for war.

  I shifted around in bed, turning from side to side, looking under the door, seeing the shadows of doctors and nurses moving back and forth, concluding a plan for my care.

  Everything in me wanted to get up and walk out of the hospital. “Who are they to determine my care?” I said in my stubborn tone. “They don’t know me. They don’t know what I go through from day to day. How can they come up with a plan for my life?”

  I turned and looked out of the window, watching the trees sway back and forth. There was only silence in the room, and that is exactly what I need, after all the loudness from life that I had been experiencing for the last few weeks. The silence in the room didn’t last for long though, as my mother suddenly barged through the door, making her presence known by talking loud with someone on the phone. Ok, Ok I am here at the hospital now, I will call you back, she said firmly as she made her way over to me closing the cell phone up.

  With the cell phone still in her hand she walked over to me and sternly said to me, “What were you thinking?” overlooking the fact that I was trying to rest. She moved my bags and lunch tray out the way, since I had decided not to eat.

  “What do you mean?” I asked quickly before she could start the long lecture she was about to embark on. I watched her as she moved swiftly through the room, organizing the clutter that had accumulated.

  “Dana,” she started as she took a deep breath and then paused as if she was gathering her thoughts. She always did this when the conversation was going to last longer than expected.

  I looked at her in the eyes, hoping she would read my facial expression and stop talking, but of course, she didn’t.

  “What were you thinking?” she asked again as she finally sat down on a chair next to my bed.

  “I don’t know,” I stated, hoping that would be enough to shut down the conversation.

  “You got that right,” she said swiftly, as she put her purse on her lap and looked out the window.

  I stared at her because I didn’t know if this conversation was over or if she was pondering her next statement. My mother always seemed to leave you thinking about what she said, contemplating if her last spoken words was the end of the conversation.

  I closed my eyes and asked, what was I thinking? The question roamed around in my head over and over. What was I thinking? The more I asked myself, the more I couldn’t come up with an answer that would vouch for what I had done. I told myself that life was too hard and that whoever dished me this hand of cards for my life definitely didn’t shuffle the cards enough to give me a few good ones, I thought laughing to myself, as I lay in bed looking at my mother doze in and out of sleep trying to force herself to stay awake to watch her soap operas during what I thought would be a short visit, but had turned into hours of her in and out of snoring and talking to herself. Finally after I had enough of her rambling on, I fell asleep in hopes of finally getting some peace.

  “Ms. Dana,” the doctor called out. “Ms. Dana,” he repeated as I began to shake the sleep off. “Looks like you are doing better,” he said, talking louder than I needed at the moment.

  He proceeded to tell me that the blood work was good and that my vitals were stable. Finalizing my report, he handed me my discharge papers along with some papers that listed help services for addiction and counseling centers.

  As much as he said I was doing better and everything looked perfect, for some reason, I felt empty inside. I’m not well, I wanted to scream back at him. I’m not fine! If you would just dissect my heart, you would see there are wounds that are still bleeding. There is pain. If you would just do a CAT scan of my brain, you would find out that I’m not well, Doctor!” There is unhealed trauma there.

  I wanted to barge in and tell him, but instead, I watched him as he smiled, pulling his white coat and fastening his buttons one by one. I glanced over and saw my mother half sleep nodding along with the doctor in agreement. I teared up because nobody understood me. They couldn’t understand what I was feeling. As much as he explained the report detail by detail, I would have to say he was wrong. I was not well, I was not healed, and most definitely, I was not going to pretend that whatever this doctor was saying was the truth. Instead, I signed the papers, mostly so he could stop going on and on about his conclusions and going into detail about the many help centers in our community. I briefly scanned the papers and threw them in my bag.

  I believe the staff wanted me out of the hospital faster than I wanted to be out. As soon as the doctor left the room, the nurse brought in a wheelchair. I wanted to say something, but I played it cool, grabbed my belongings, and went into the bathroom to change into the extra clothes my mother had brought for me.

  As they rolled me out in the wheelchair, I thought how wrong this doctor was, how he misdiagnosed me. I wanted to scream and shout at him. I said to myself over and over, I am not healed; I am not well.

  Slamming the door to my mother’s car, looking out the window as we drove off, and telling myself I am not well, I put my head back and went to sleep.

  Chapter 7

  As I put the finishing touches on breakfast, arranging the strawberries and pouring the orange juice, I could hear jordan and christina arguing about something that happened at school.

  “Christina! Jordan! Come eat!” I called out, hoping they would stop the back and forth of the “no I didn’t, yes you did scenario.”

  As I set their plates, I remembered my school days and how I thought that junior high and high school was it, as if that is where my life story ended. I thought life wouldn’t go beyond those bad days I had at school or beyond the boys that never seemed like they wanted to grow up. I chuckled at my kids, thinking how soon they would find out that one bad day doesn’t account for the rest of your life.

  After that horrific day of trying to kill myself, taking pills to take myself out from what I was going through, I learned to just deal with myself and come to grips with why I was in the situation I was in. I started to deal with the deep-rooted issues. I asked myself, Why am I angry at the world? Why did I give men the part of my body that was supposed to be saved for my husband? Why did I give it up so freely, thinking in return that they loved me? Why did I consider mental and physical abuse love? Why did I struggle with feeling beautiful? Why did I devalue myself to elevate someone else’s ego?

  I then found myself awakeni
ng to the me in me. I found myself dealing with the wounds that I had hid, hoping they would never resurface again. The wounds that caused me to react to certain things in a manner that I now know was not beneficial to my life and anyone who entered my life. I thought it was my fault that my mother wasn’t around. I used to wonder day in and day out, if it was me who drove my father away.

  Even though that day opened my eyes to reality, I was still left to deal with those emotions that derived from experiences that I had not yet let heal or even given the opportunity to be healed. Prior to that day I tried to take my life, I thought I buried those feelings. I thought I put them in the closet, shut the door, and threw out the key. Awakening the true me in me I had to understand the importance of learning to deal with my mind to ultimately capture the newness I so desperately desired.

  The stage of getting a hold on my mind was the most difficult. I was fighting against what I desired and what desired me. Dealing with the mind can be tricky and tedious, I have come to find out. I’ve learned that I couldn’t truly move forward without this one step, and that was to deal with myself, to dissect every part of my very being.

  Learning that I am a product of my life experiences. What I have been through was being demonstrated in my everyday living through emotions: how I reacted to certain things, what I choose to devote my time too, and it also affected who I decided to be around. It’s not until I sorted out what triggers certain things, separating the positives and negatives into a filtering tank, that I was able to reprogram my thinking, understanding that a new me required a new mindset.

  According to Brian Tracy, he explained very bluntly that you must be willing to come out of your comfort zone to reprogram your mind. It was easy for me to say I want change but didn’t fully comprehend the fight it would take, the emotional ties that would have to be broken, and the relationships that would need to cease, that would be forced for me to move beyond what was familiar to me. The years and years that I would have to strip myself from. I had to learn that I can’t want change and still feel comfortable in what caused me to want the change.

  I had to come to the realization that change must come with a new mindset. Change produces newness. I can’t desire to be successful and financially stable while sitting on the couch day in and day out watching TV, and expecting money and success to fall into my lap. There must be a change and a newness to produce what wasn’t there before. Where I was in life had become so uncomfortable, that with a complacent mindset and wanting change at the same time could not possibly dwell in one place. I had to tell myself that if I wanted something different, I will be forced to have to think differently and when I thought different, my actions became different, then once my actions became different, my outcome was a result of my changed mentality. I had to understand that my actions are the result of my thinking. If I think success, then my actions will display success. If I think poverty, then my actions may very well display poverty. If I continued to think hurt, then my actions would have been a continuing road of displaying hurt.

  I can’t take that broken, ten-year-old girl—raped, emotionally abused, abandoned, homeless, and deprived of the nutrition necessary to have a healthy life—into a changed life. I can’t take that girl along with me into relationships, into my career, into my home. I had to detach myself from the hurt and pain that came along with that little girl. When I tried taking her, I sowed hurt and pain into everything and everyone I was involved in and with. So in return, I reaped hurt and pain. The only thing I should have taken was the lesson that was made in the process. Not the tears and pain, and not the emotions I had attached to my situation. Nothing is supposed to go with me once I get out of a storm, but the strength that was built and the lesson that was learned. When I started to understand that, I began to walk away from people and things with my head held high, with boldness and the strength to make it through the next season in my life.

  That is where I messed up at, for so long I took my hurt and pain with me year after year—old boyfriend issues, daddy issues, what mama did or didn’t do, the danny issues and so on. I was proclaiming I am fine and well while carrying around the issues of my past—bag lady. I couldn’t trust anyone, and I thought every man was like the last man. I couldn’t open myself to relationships because of fear of being hurt. Day in and day out, I carried around the weight of my past. I had to strip myself of all the hurt, never forgetting but letting the pain and trauma go, reminding myself that I was holding on to the very things that were causing me to kill the inner me—the inner me who wanted to live, wanted to be happy, wanted to smile, and wanted to sleep at night without the fear of someone coming into my room. I had to release myself from what was holding me back.

  I had to come to grips with the fact that I had the power to change the whole time residing on the inside of me. Nothing could hold me back unless I give it the power to do so. It was me the whole time who depleted myself of the power to change. To be faced with Change, caused me to shake a little, feel uneasy and tense. In essence, change caused fire to be put under my bottom so I could rise and move forward. If I still felt comfortable in what I was in, I would have never embraced change. I would have diddle and dawdle in it and returned back to my unstable situation and mindset.

  It was in that one moment when I had enough, when I had cried enough, when I had held my head down too long, when my situation had become too unbearable to stay another second in the same spot. Until my only move was to move forward. I have learned that there is no going back when moving forward is all you desire. The creator is constantly moving me forward. Just looking back two years ago, though I appreciated the struggle, and the joy and laughter that came with that season in my life, I can’t see myself going back. This new mindset I have gained, won’t allow me to exist comfortably where I used to be two years ago.

  When I turned seventeen, I was fully invested in Christian. I talked about him, I dreamed about him, I scribbled his name everywhere—it makes me chuckle even now. How I thought this would be everything I wanted and dreamed of. Oh, how I thought I would not be like the women who work two and three jobs, and never home, with the thought of Christian being there for his kids, not leaving our kids like my father left me. I was not aware that I was playing out the very part of my life that I was trying to run away from. I wanted a change from the fighting and emotional stress but was not uncomfortable enough to strip away the mindset that I was comfortable with, so I stayed, neglecting my own change and my own newness. I was attached to issues that I was trying to disengage from, because the outer issues were familiar to the inner issues. I remember telling myself that this is what I deserve; my self-esteem was low and my value was overlooked.

  I have noticed men who see their fathers beat their mothers and vow never to hit women but fall into the same pattern. I’ve also come across girls who watched her single mother work day in and day out and have this man one week and another the next week. When she becomes an adult, she promises to do better, but she instead grows to be a busy “independent” woman who feels she doesn’t need a man. She is her own boss, too bossy to let a man be a man in her life, too strong to understand submission to one another, too man-driven to let a man help, scared to marry because that is not what she saw at home. She goes from man to man not knowing what true love is. She is attracted to the very lifestyle she promised herself she wouldn’t have. It felt ok to identify and become oneness with pain, when I was accustomed to living in pain. As much as I tried to run away from the issues in my past, the more quickly I ran right into the life I was running from. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t heal what needed to be healed so I can become a functional adult, to be equipped to handle the newness I tried to take on. Instead I ran to what I identified with.

  It was not until I went in and started to deal with the Dana inside of Dana. That I was able to detach myself from my issues. I had to learn that people can’t come in and play super-man, and make you whole and we
ll again. Only God can do that! When I put such a high demand on people, they soon became weighed down, left only with the alternative, and that was to leave … trying to fulfill something that was impossible. I had to come to grips with my mother, father, sister, brother, or even spouse not being able to fulfill such a big task. When I put that much weight on someone, I was setting that relationship and myself up for failure. I couldn’t expect someone to come in and heal years of wounds inflicted by my father being absent, drugs, men, low self-esteem and so on. Healing, change, and newness take place from the inside out, not the outside in. The outward is the reflection of what is or has taken place on the inside.

  For so long, I allowed my hurt, pain, anger, and guilt to guide my thinking. I was caught up in a relationship, trying to make one man pay off the debt of what others had done to me.

  “Mama! Mama!” I heard my kids calling as they ran up to me, startling me, interrupting my thoughts as I was looking out at the trees sway back and forth from the kitchen window.

  I grabbed trinity, giving her a tight hug, and gently kissed Amanda on the cheek. The twins were at that age where kissing and hugging was gross or weird. They laughed as I squeezed their cheeks one by one. I saw the excitement in their eyes, the glow of just being a kid, the smiles that would light up the world.

  “Go ahead and change into play clothes,” I told them cheerfully as I turned away from Amanda standing next to me smiling, “so you guys can go out and play for a little after breakfast.” I added over the loud footsteps as they made their way toward their rooms, “Amanda, help your little sister brush her teeth.” I yelled down the hall as she ran with enthusiasm.